


In this light

by itsdeianeira



Series: Our Own Soundtrack [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Beach Holidays, Best Man Stiles, Derek Uses His Words, First Kiss, Future Fic, Happy Ending, M/M, Mates, Or is it a beginning?, POV Stiles, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Song Lyrics, True Mates, Werewolf Mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsdeianeira/pseuds/itsdeianeira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was starting to feel dizzy. He could feel the alcohol blending into his blood and running through his veins, drowning his loneliness and all his troubles. He was trying his best to forget the pair of light, hazel eyes that had recently started haunting his dreams. The same eyes that he had met again after five fucking years spent wondering and wandering in search of that something he could not fathom. At least until a few days ago, when the reunion with their owner had made his heart skip a beat, with no chance a werewolf could have missed it...</p><p>“What is my life."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this light

He was starting to feel dizzy. He could feel the alcohol blending into his blood and running through his veins, drowning his loneliness and all his troubles. He was trying his best to forget the pair of light, hazel eyes that had recently started haunting his dreams. The same eyes that he had met again after five fucking years spent wondering and wandering in search of that something he could not fathom. At least until a few days ago, when the reunion with their owner had made his heart skip a beat, with no chance a werewolf could have missed it...

“What is my life,” he muttered under his breath, watching the amber liquid whirling around as he lulled the tumbler in his hand.

“Stiles, I think you drank too much already,” Scott quickly stole his glass, gulping down its content to ensure it didn't run down his best friend's throat. Stiles pouted at him. “It's my marriage and you are my best man. I can't deal with a drunk groomsman tomorrow. I'm enough nervous with all my plans going smoothly.”

“It's not fair you can drink whatever you want without risking to be hangover on your wedding day, while I can't even enjoy my second drink,” Stiles slurred a bit.

“Sorry, buddy.” Scott shrugged self-conscious, before going back to talk with the guys about relationship dynamics and the harshness of understanding the female species.

 _Yay!_ Stiles mentally noted.

On the right corner of the ring, Scott was advocating his puppy love philosophy, enthusiastically shared by both Brett and Liam, according to which girls, with no exceptions, were precious gems to cherish. On the opposite corner, the rival that everyone would fear, the most hateful, dreadful guy ever walking a lacrosse field – which might seem a hyperbole, but not if you asked Stiles. Jackson Whittermore was upholding the same opinion about women which had ruined Lydia's make up so many times that even she had lost count. Six fucking years in Europe hadn't changed him at all, and now he was coming out with something about showing backbones... or whatever. Stiles didn't really know. In the middle, Danny, Ethan and Mason were trying to moderate without any success, while Isaac looked mostly passive and uninterested as his usual.

And then there was him, the young Stilinski, who could not care less about the whole matter. Because, apparently, his heart and mind had recently devoted themselves to a certain individual. A stunning and incredibly unattainable individual.

During his senior year in high school, he had stopped feeling any kind of attraction towards any kind of people, like his senses had decided to suddenly retire without an explanation. Out of the blue, he had found himself dealing with a pure inexplicable apathy surging in him and overlooking every feeling. Well, not when it came to friendship or familiar bonds. It was strictly related to, you know... passion. No more arousal, no more sexual attraction. Actually, no attraction in general. Caput. The end. His relationship with Malia had frozen and things had ended with a friendly handshake, and even if she'd never blamed him he still felt guilty for the direction things had taken.

After that, no one else had ever brushed his mind. No girl, no boy. So when his therapist had claimed he was probably asexual – which, was she for real? _Probably_? Who's supposed to be the doctor, here? – he had made peace with himself and accepted his way of being. And give a sad, mournful goodbye to the campus life of freedom and experimentation he had once looked forward to with much enthusiasm! Being double majored in Literature and Psychology by the end of his 21s had been as easy as pie thanks to the lack of distractions.

And then, after years of inactivity and radio silence, his senses had woken up the day Derek had shown up again in all his glory, breaking the quiet routine he had put so much effort in establishing. _Asexual my ass._

Speaking about asses... “Hey, where's Derek?”

“I-” Scott turned, looking around the saloon. “-don't really know, actually.”

“He said he needed some air,” Danny said giving Stiles a lopsided gentle smile, showing off his lovely dimples. _See, Stiles? Why the fuck couldn't you fall for a guy like Danny? He's sweet and kind to everyone. Everybody loves Danny, why don't you?_

He shook his head slightly to easy his feet back on the ground. “Why would he need air if he haven't even touched a glass?”

“And what would we know?” Yep, Jackson was still the same douche.

Stiles kept on looking around, tossing and turning, unable to stay still on his seat. Finally, when he had made sure Derek was not in the near proximity, he stood up.

“I'm gonna walk a bit. Don't wait for me, okay? Jet leg is taking the upper hand so I guess I'll go straight to the hotel and in my room. Gotta be in shape for tomorrow.” He pat hard Scott's shoulder knowing whichever pain or bruise would have faded in no time.

“Okay, buddy.” Scott said, standing and opening his arms for a hug. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah. Goodnight gentlemen,” Stiles saluted, as the others gave him a significant nod, blessing his getaway.

 

Slamming the door open, he stopped on the threshold, taking in the mesmerizing view projecting in front of him. Leave it to Kira and Scott to set their wedding on a wonderful Japanese beach. Stiles didn't even know Japan had beaches... Didn't Japanese people actually disdain sunbathing and whatever regarded a tan? Whatever. Stiles was glad they had chosen a place this distant from home. He breathed in the iodized air, kicked away his shoes and started striding towards the sea. Shirahama Beach was surely wonderful at day with its white, silky sand, and its clear water, able to reflect different shades of greens and blue depending on angle sun rays hit it. It reminded him of the same pair of irises that had lately took over his dreams and fogged up his brain. But like this, at night, somehow it event felt more magical.

He slowly got to the shore, walking without actually see where he was going in the dim, silver light of the moon, but trusting the sensation of fresh, smooth sand under his feet. When then he finally felt his toes digging the silt, he rolled his jeans up to his knees and let the ebbing and flowing of the saltwater wet his ankles. The hotel at his shoulders got more remote at every step he took on his lonely path along the sea, shoes dangling from his hand and full moon guiding him to no aim in particular.

But when he looked up from the ground, a silhouette was slowly looming in the distance as he went forward. The familiar figure sitting on the beach, had his shoulders slumped over, chin up and eyes lost in the space before him. Derek's image was iron-branded in Stiles' mind to the point he would have recognized that posture from miles. His heart started hammering in his chest, but he kept going, feet shuffling on on their own will.

 

He stepped closer. Derek didn't acknowledge his presence keeping very still, but Stiles knew he noticed him, werewolf senses and all that.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the return of our never-missed Sourwolf, the epitome of the loner!”

Derek turned, lifting up his eyebrows in suspicion, no hate or disdain in his glance. Wait, was that amusement? It must have been worse than Stiles had thought, then. “What's up big guy? Why did you disappear like that?”

“I just needed air.” Derek nodded towards the sky at the plane white round of faint light shining bright in the clear sky.

“Are you having trouble keeping in control?” Stiles asked, suddenly serious.

Derek's eyebrows quickly furrowed, and  _that_  was a look worth of a sourwolf.  “I'm fine, Stiles.” He stated in a rigid tone.

“Than why are you so lonesome tonight?”

“Well, since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell.”

“Did you just make a Elvis reference here?”

“Congrats, Stiles.”

“I had almost forgotten how broody you could be. You changed though, since you digievolved and then left for a romantic escape.”

“Stiles, I'm not a digimon.”

Seriously, of all the things he could have picked from his sentence, that was the one he chose?

“You could be! You'd be this wolfish creature with a black, silky fur and deep blue eyes, scary at first but a real puppy inside. Dark and fluffy. _Roar._ ”

Derek huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “You didn't change a bit, on the contrary.”

At that, Stiles was sure Derek actually meant that he had remained the old good annoying hyperactive spaz he had left in Beacon Hills five years ago. Whatever. If Derek still could not stand his persona, Stiles was fine with it. Or not really. But still, he wasn't going to let it bring him down and cool the mood. Derek Hale was already spreading enough misery for the both of them, making the air heavy and unbreathable.

So Stiles did what he could do better: he kept talking.

“Oh shut up, you missed all of this.” He blurt out, gesturing widely at his whole being.

Derek looked away from the horizon and turned to him, expression unreadable. “What if I did?” His eyes were piercing in Stiles', leaving him breathless, speechless, gaping.

What was that?

What did it mean?

He kept on mouthing like a fish out of water but nothing came out. Derek Hale, ladies and gentlemen, the only man who owned the ability to shut up Stiles Stilinski.

“What are you here for, Stiles?” Derek resumed, eyes back on the salty stretch of water and away from him.

And that was a good question.

Stiles didn't know. Really didn't know. He didn't know why he had walked away from the hotel this late instead of taking the lift up to his room, jumping on his bed and fighting jet leg. He didn't know where the urge of walking by the seaside at this hour of the night had come from, nor why he was sitting down mare inches from Derek. He didn't know why, all of a sudden, he was feeling overwhelmed by the nostalgia of the times when he thought he hated this man.

“Where's your plus 1?”

“Do you always answer a question with another question?”

“Didn't you already know that?” Stiles lifted an eyebrow with a victorious smirk on his lips.

Derek sighed soundly, his expression oozing surrender. “I've never had a plus 1.”

“What about Braeden?”

“Did you see her around ever since I came back?”

“Nope.”

“There you go, your answer.”

And, okay, how was he supposed to interpret the news?

“So you two... are not a thing anymore?”

“Are you and my cousin still a thing?” Derek asked with a mocking tone.

Stiles paused, back in a corner, running out of interrogations to argue back with. He was trying to decide whether to speak bluntly and honestly, or to stay silent and let the quiet answer for him. It was like truth or dare, and he was taking his sweet time to ponder the pros and cons of a choice.

“We haven't been together for years now...” He confessed, even though he had the suspect Derek already knew. It was his cousin they were talking about after all. “But you wouldn't know, cause you left.” _And straightforwardness it is, then._

Derek winced, his face going through a mix of emotions, but regaining his coolness in the end. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked matter-of-factly.

Rage started boiling inside Stiles, roaring through his system and clouding his head.

“Oh I don't know, Derek. Maybe stick with the pack? Fight with us? You, who always wanted a pack, who would have done anything to have someone to soothe your misery and your guilt. But Braeden was enough, right? She was the one human that saved you, that taught you how to use a gun when you had no power. In the end, we were just a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers to you. Incompetent and without any sense of danger. Who could ever trust such elements? But you know what? We were there for you, Derek. We were there every single time. We would have caught you when you'd fall. _I_ would have caught you. If you'd just found the courage to rely on us... You and your fucking martyr complex. Instead, when you lose your powers, you choose to rely on someone who you've known for how long? Weeks? Months? Tell me Derek, shine a little light on me.” Stiles was staring at him with wide eyes, trying to read this man, trying to find a way into his heart. Stiles saw Derek's nostrils flare, he inhaling the probably acid smell that was currently seeping out of Stiles. He must have been stinking of betrayal for a while now. Derek elaborated the input received through his nose and it hit him, his face abruptly changing to something softer. He was petrified in terror and regret, and Stiles felt guilt surging in himself. Stiles' stomach sunk and he took a step back. “I'm...” _Sorry. I'm so sorry I just vomited you all the words of resentment that had been floating in my mind since the day you left without a goodbye._ “I don't know why I'm here. I should have turned on my heels and run back to the hotel as soon as I saw you.”

He stood up, ready to bolt away back to the hotel, but Derek quickly jumped up on his own feet to level him.

“That's not true and you know it.”

“Then tell me, Derek. Use your words for once in your lifetime.” Stiles voice had lost all its anger, leaving just the impression of sadness.

“Fuck Stiles! You really want me to say it? _I_ was the fucking kid who didn't know what he was doing. I was the one bringing damage to the pack. First, I kill my first love, then I trust a psychotic bitch who turns out to be an arsonist and burns my entire family ALIVE. This, of fucking course, leads to my uncle going nuts and killing my sister, only right before turning an oblivious teenage boy into a werewolf. But when I have finally dealt with Kate and Peter, I suddenly feel the need to create a new pack, with the foolish belief that persuading a bunch of misfits into being monsters is much more honorable than the way my uncle acted with Scott. And Jackson happened, and guess whose fault was that? Oh, but that's not the end, of course, because than the Alpha pack came around to play with me. And Jennifer? Yeah, good job that too. Then you...” He came to an abrupt halt. Glance glued to Stiles, slowly softening. “The Nogitsune was my fault, too. I kept thinking that if only I had realized about the Darach in time, if only I had stopped Jennifer, you wouldn't have died to save your parents, you wouldn't have had to open that fucking door. And without the Nogitsune, Allison would have lived and my crazy ex girlfriend wouldn't have come back for her vendetta.”

Derek's voice dropped out and silence fell heavy all around them, rhythmically broken by the whoosh of water on the wet sand. In all that, Stiles stared in dismay.

“Guilt was slowly corroding me from the inside, Stiles. I needed to figure things out on my own, I could not let other things happen to you all because of me.”

Stiles looked down, trying to find his center, trying to find the strength to argue.

“Yet, terrific things kept happening even without you. And we needed you, but you weren't there.” Stiles claimed with a flat, placid tone. If his stomach started twining in fondness, Derek didn't have to know. “Why you never told us such things? Why did you kept everything to yourself. Always so impenetrable, locked up inside your own mind, trusting no one to save you. And then...Why Braeden?” _Why not me?_ He bite his lower lip before revealing something he could have not taken back.

“I... It just happened. I used to hide behind my powers, my wolf, so, when those walls started crumbling, my defenses fell. And Braeden was there to step inside even when I didn't want her to. She helped me realize who I was, the human me, she taught me I was enough even without my powers and I learned to rely on myself, to be fine in loneliness-”

“Sounds like a Buddhist monk.”

Derek smiled at the ground. “Sort of.”

“So why did you two broke up?”

Derek exhaled slowly. “You know, coming to know yourself better means starting to feel the need to be honest and faithful to yourself. You start thinking you owe yourself the truth and misery is not worth your hiding. All the feelings I had been in denial of slowly surfaced and, once free from the chains I had kept them in, they amplified blowing over my mind. I had to face them, to assimilate them all at once...”

Touching, but Stiles didn't really understand where this was going.

“So while me and Braeden tried to live our routine together, it became gradually evident to both of us that I wasn't in love with her. The place she wanted to conquer was taken since long before I had met her.”

Stiles had majored in Literature. He had studied. His dorm room had been plenty of stories about souls finding each other all over again in every life they lived on earth, mates for eternity, favored by Destiny or Fate or whatever divinity. He had studied. He knew werewolves were no exception. On the contrary, with all the anchor issue the percentage of mating was much higher than it was among humans. Natural instinct, preservation of the species and so on.

“So all those stories about mates...”

Derek nodded. “True.” He supplied, eyes darting in the inscrutable distance.

Paige's story flashed through Stiles' mind right away. But then Derek's eyes were on him, so intense under the faint light of the moon, and all Stiles' certainties cave in. His mind went blank, his lungs craving for air and his heart pounding in his chest. And once again Stiles was gaping, looking for words, looking for oxygen. Once again he was stumbling on the impression that behind Derek's words there was something left unsaid. He might have learned to be honest with himself, but he still needed to work on his transparency of communication.

“Stiles you better go.”

“Why? So that you can soak in affliction, mourning everything you have lost instead of reaching for what you want?”

“What I want is something I can't have.”

“That's an excuse, Derek. The truth is you're fucking afraid of everything. You're a werewolf for god's sak-”

The next thing Stiles knew, Derek's lips were pressed on his, hands suddenly cupping his face in the attempt to keep his head still. It felt... awkward, but it sent a jolt to his heart nonetheless.

When Derek started pushing away, Stiles grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in again for another kiss, more passionate, more languid and soft. As Derek responded parting his lips, he slid his tongue inside, savoring him, before the man nipped at his lower lip sending a shiver across his spine. It felt like pouring rain after years of drought, like coming to the only oasis left in the middle of the desert. It felt new and refreshing and olden and ancestral, as something you know you have felt before but you can't really remember when, like a reminiscence in your eternal soul. All these years, all these last years, this was the sensation he was missing, the one his soul was waiting for without his mind really knowing.

Their lips broke apart just to let their foreheads lean one against the other, so as to keep the circuit closed, in the mutual exchange of energy where their skin met.

“What was that?” Stiles panted in search of oxygen.

Derek wheezed lightly. “I thought it was self-explanatory.” Stiles could sense the smile in his voice even with his eyes closed.

“Nothing without you is unequivocal, Derek,” he chuckled.

The older man took a deep breath before whispering, “You're my mate.”

And that was... unexpected. His eyes slid open, widening impossibly, and he pulled away just enough to look him straight in the eye. “Since when?”

“There's not a starting time, Stiles. It's just destiny, you have it in yourself, you can't-”

“I know that, dumbass. But... When did you realized it? And don't tell me the moment we met because I know that not being true.”

Derek shook his head grinning down. “I've always felt this pull towards you, like a gravity that forced me to orbit you like the moon around the earth, and it annoyed me, because I didn't want that. It was this maddening attraction-”

“Sexual tension," Stiles blurted out unable to keep from smiling.

“Yeah, I think you could call it that.” He laughed. “So I just used to suppress it. But when I died to come back again, my wolf's senses enhanced together with its powers and that attraction grew exponentially until it was impossible to deny.”

“So why now? Why did you waited to come back?”

“I was afraid of what I could have found coming back. I didn't know- I still don't know if you...”

Stiles mind was thrown back to the beginning of his apathy, reviewing the years he had spent seeking for that something he had just found. “Is there any chance my soul would have shared the same feeling of your wolf?” He asked softly, eyes lost in nothingness.

Derek seemed perplexed. “I don't know. It's difficult for humans as you don't get the same urges, you can ignore such feelings more easily.” Stiles looked up again to meet Derek worried glance. He needed to know, he wanted him to know. He wanted to make it clear to him that Stiles would have never desired anyone else. And so Stiles said it. He told him everything he had been through, everything Derek had missed along the years, his struggles, his wait.

In the end, Derek was left astonished.

“I didn't know.” He said, guilt raising in his voice. “I'm sorry, Stiles. I'm so sorry it took me so long. I just...” He kissed him again, frantic as to let his body demonstrate with gestures what words could not explain.

When his warm palm curled on Stiles' cheek, Stiles felt whole. Tears forced their way to his eyes and streamed down slowly, but Derek's thumb was there on his cheekbone, ready to wipe it all away. He squeezed his eyelids shut to make it stop, to clear his own vision from the watery veil, to see Derek face again.

In this light Derek's pupils were like obsidian stones encased by irises of fluid silver. He was so beautiful, and Stiles was so in love with him. So, _so in love_.

 

 _Should this be the last thing I see,_  
_I want you to know it's enough for me,_  
_'Cause all that you are is all that I'll ever need._

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is what my mind elaborates on a hot, boring morning on the beach as Tenerife Sea plays through my headphones.  
> I imagined this scene more than a week ago, while I was depressing thinking of my favourite tv show's imminent premiere without my favourite character in it. 
> 
> It's basically how I would want Stiles and Derek to meet again... and I might add that, believe it or not, the fact the two Sterek scenes of s05 (without Derek actually being on the screen, thank you very much!) made this situation more plausible is just pure coincidence! I swear this fic was concluded before 5x01!!! 
> 
> So... hope you liked it at least a bit. Whichever impression you had about it, let me know :) ♥
> 
> Also, English's not my native language, so if I made any typo just feel free to notify that in the comments so that I can edit the work.
> 
> PS: I also have [twitter](https://twitter.com/Deianeira__) and [tumblr](http://whisperingfae.tumblr.com/), if you want to come and say hi! :3


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